The best sites to self-publish your book online

I’m not going to ramble, but try and cut to the chase, as I’ve been down this road — trust me — and it’s a very diverse one, these days.

For testing your writing, gaining an audience, improving and developing: use Wattpad. You can make alterations fast, get feedback. You can develop your style.

For a more mature readership, and for getting some first rewards and more recognition: use Medium, but take time to submit to relevant publications.

Do the above two preferably in order, and you should receive motivation enough to reach the end of your writing project(s).

Then…

Consider Blockchain

There are new, emerging writing platforms where your words can live on the blockchain, decentralised. These sites should be ad-free and ‘community-run’. This means they are not subject to any one company so will not disappear, or are subject to new subscriptions etc. You can still edit the content, don’t worry.

It’s a matter of choice as to which blockchain you ‘believe’ in, what nature/consensus protocol it uses, and what has the best, or most active users engaging with them. They should be seeing decent amount of development.

You could start by testing the waters, sharing sections of your book and attracting users to its presence on Wattpad and/or Medium.

Blockchain dapps are monetized by cryptocurrency but this can depend on how recent you publish, and may not give you ‘lifelong’ reward options. However, you may still get donations. It depends on the community present on these platforms. Are they your target audience? If it’s a crypto-related story or book, then you could be especially lucky.

Your own website/page

Don’t forget, you can still gain monetized crypto rewards by promoting your own site. You can link an existing WordPress, Youtube, Facebook account or channel using Bittube (to earn TUBEs) or Brave Rewards (to earn BAT).

Amazon Kindle

You can still organise a book on Amazon Kindle and generate a Facebook group following to go with it, but… you’ll have to launch it well when it goes live, and gain as many reviews as possible (ie. write something good) before it sinks without trace into the Amazon swamp of books.

Do not assume people can just ‘find’ it.

It’s a diverse online world so try not to get engulfed. Play your cards in the right order.